-The Times of India Even as Red menace continues to be a major internal security challenge affecting almost one-third of total districts in the country, West Bengal — parts of which was once a hotbed of Maoist activities — has shown a remarkable improvement with none of its naxal-affected district reporting any casualty in the first seven months this year. Bihar comes next, reporting significant improvement in terms of reduced incidents and...

-The Hindu The government has issued a warning letter to Programme for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), asking it to be careful while conducting clinical trials so as to ensure that discrepancies and violations are not repeated in future. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) had suspended the Phase-V post licensure clinical trial being conducted by PATH, an international non-governmental organisation, in Khamman (Andhra Pradesh) and Vadodara (Gujarat) for Human Papilloma...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

-The Telegraph The CRPF will review standard operating procedures (SOPs) on tackling Maoists’ “human shields” and conducting night operations, sources said today, less than a week after Friday’s controversial operation in Chhattisgarh that resulted in 19 deaths. The move came on a day a preliminary report by a panel of state Congress leaders suggested six of those killed were villagers in their teens. Yesterday, Union tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo had...

Security forces zeroed in on the location of top Maoist leader Kishanji with the help from their informants within close quarters of the operational commander in what marks a success of intelligence agencies in penetrating the close-knit extremist outfit and suggests that other top-notch extremists could also be in the crosshairs. Senior official sources attribute the elimination of Kishanji to 'HumInt' ( human intelligence) network, painstakingly nurtured during the truce they...